Living between Valbonne and Arundel amongst the idle rich

Hedging ones bets

I had my way and watched cricket from midday. There was however the usual trade off which involved me with shears and clippers interacting in a most unsatisfactory manner with a hedge. It was not a pleasant encounter in 30 degrees heat and on balance I thought the hedge won. Well, it lost almost as much weight as I did but it drew blood from me on several occasions, something that I was not able to match. If I was a betting man then I could have made some joke about hedging my bets, but then you know that is beneath the literary standards that I have very successfully failed to apply to this column.

Then there was the small matter of removing all the clippings. After the 1st July the local authority declare a “period rouge”, which bans all bonfires and unguarded barbecues due to the danger of forest fires. Thus all waste now has to be bagged up and taken to the tip. Guess whose job it was then to dispose of twenty large refuse sacks full of garden waste? There is not a communal bin with a mile that was not full before the first ball was bowled.

We eschewed the opportunity to go down to Valbonne village for the fireworks for several reasons; I was in a dreaded diet day which precluded the possibility of having a drink, we are off to see the fireworks in Cannes tomorrow, and that Nice Lady Decorator wanted to see what her new solar-powered lanterns adorning the sails in the web, our outside bar, would look like. These were one of the many goodies she had spent hours collecting at Ikea in the past week and she declared herself very content with the results, which you can judge for yourself from today’s picture.

Solar powered lanterns in the web

This morning we are dog walking with Tony “I invented the internet” Coombs and his flame haired beautiful wife Pat. They have as a pet a dog even more unpopular that hound that blights my life, Banjo. Their little darling is hyperactive and impossible to tire. He has amused himself recently by digging up Tony’s automatic watering system and pulling the rubber pipes laid under the lawn and gathering them in one place to await further instructions. Repairing the damage will cost a pretty penny, but as you can imagine, this will be not bother the man who invented the Internet.

Then, this afternoon, after watching England complete a memorable Ashes win over Australia at Trent Bridge, Peachy Butterfield has told me he will be popping around for a glass of rosé before we are whisked away to Port de la Rague to join the Master Mariner Mundell aboard l’Exocet. We shall once again be sailing around to Cannes to watch the fireworks, this time in celebration of Bastille Day. I am hoping to meet at least one other Currencies Direct client aboard, such is the intellectual superior level of the people who will be aboard.

Preparations must then begin for a trip to London on Thursday to the hallowed turf of Lords. The home of cricket will be staging the Second Test against Australia and I have tickets for days one and two. Cricket is the very best game in the world. That’s it. I will brook no argument. I will however be taking the profit from the sales of my book to spend, now standing at 28 euros after another sale today, bringing the total to 113 copies, but I have information that one of my distributors may have sold 9 more copies. Marina Kulik, I so hope you are not squandering my profits whilst you are in Amsterdam…